China pledges greater ef­fort to crack down on fi­nan­cial crime

China's ju­di­cial au­thor­i­ties vowed to do more to com­bat fi­nan­cial crimes in the com­ing year, as the econ­omy slows and lead­ers re­main con­cerned that fi­nan­cial risks might lead to higher un­em­ploy­ment and so­cial un­rest.

Chief pros­e­cu­tor Cao Jian­ming said in his an­nual re­port to the coun­try's top leg­is­la­ture on Sun­day that his depart­ment would pri­or­i­tize in­ves­ti­ga­tions into fi­nance, se­cu­ri­ties and in­sur­ance to "guar­an­tee a healthy de­vel­op­ment of cap­i­tal mar­ket." The Supreme Peo­ple's Procu­ra­torate plans to tackle fi­nan­cial crimes in­volvin il­le­gal fundrais­ing to pro­tect the pub­lic and fo­cus on con­tract fraud crimes to es­tab­lish a "fair and or­derly en­vi­ron­ment of mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion", he said.

The govern­ment has launched in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­volv­ing some of the na­tion's largest fi­nan­cial firms fol­low­ing a stock mar­ket col­lapse last year that erased $5 tril­lion in value. Reg­u­la­tors in Bei­jing also have also tar­geted the boom­ing on­line loan in­dus­try by in­ves­ti­gat­ing one of the largest P2P bro­kers, Ezubao.